Court watchers expect Supreme Court will take up Trump’s firings, birthright citizenship challenge

The first legal challenge to President Trump’s aggressive agenda, the ouster of a top government watchdog, is heading to the Supreme Court.

Experts say the battle over Hampton Dellinger’s firing as head of the Office of Special Counsel could be the first of many cases for the high court’s docket. These include Mr. Trump’s campaign to remake the federal bureaucracy, his unilateral moves to rein in federal spending and his attempt to limit the right to citizenship for everyone born on U.S. territory.

The pace of cases is feverish, averaging nearly three new legal challenges daily, reflecting the frenetic scope of Mr. Trump’s first four weeks in office.

Several of the cases have sped through the lower courts and reached the appellate level, including one birthright citizenship case, one challenge to the president’s pause on spending approved by Congress, and Mr. Dellinger’s case challenging his firing as the government’s chief defender of whistleblowers and top cop for violations of the Hatch Act.

Lower courts have restricted Mr. Trump’s early agenda. A federal district judge in Washington issued a temporary restraining order keeping Mr. Dellinger on the job, at least for now.

Mr. Trump asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to allow the firing to proceed while the case is fought. The appeals court refused, saying courts don’t usually get involved in appeals over temporary restraining orders. Mr. Trump wants the Supreme Court to intervene.

Acting Solicitor General Sarah M. Harris called the lower court ruling “an unprecedented assault on the separation of powers,” which demanded the high court’s immediate attention.

“This court should not allow lower courts to seize executive power by dictating to the president how long he must continue employing an agency head against his will,” Ms. Harris argued to the justices.

Mr. Dellinger, who says he can be fired only for cause, asked the high court to keep him in his post while the battle proceeds.

The case is an early test of firing powers for a president who has already laid off tens of thousands of government employees, including new hires and senior agency directors.

Mr. Trump also faces challenges from ousted members of the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board. More than a dozen inspectors general whom Mr. Trump fired are also suing.

All argue that their jobs are protected under a 90-year-old case, Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, in which the Supreme Court found that the president’s firing powers are limited for “independent agencies” within the executive branch.

“I think they have to take the case,” Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, said of the NLRB dispute.

Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, expects the justices to overturn the Humphrey’s Executor case and support the president’s firing powers.

“I think that is going to happen, I would guess, maybe next term,” he said.

Mr. Blackman agreed.

“I think it would be hard for them to uphold it,” he said.

He said the case is an interesting test for some Republican-appointed justices. He said he thinks Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett would like to avoid the issue but Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, a defender of presidential powers, could be a key vote to force the case onto the docket.

It takes four justices to agree to hear a case.

The birthright citizenship cases also involve weighty constitutional issues.

Democratic-led states, immigrant rights groups and pregnant migrant women have sued to derail Mr. Trump’s policy, saying he is trampling on long-understood rights and precedents under the 14th Amendment.

So far, they have had the better of the argument in federal district courts. A case out of Seattle has sped to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the judges have been asked to issue an emergency order allowing Mr. Trump’s policy to take effect.

“The birthright citizenship case is the one that I think would be most situated for Supreme Court review,” said Adam Feldman, Supreme Court scholar and creator of the “Empirical SCOTUS” blog. “There’s a clear constitutional hook, and it is one of those areas where case law could go a long way to create clear boundaries on this issue.”

Another question is when the Supreme Court can address some of these issues as its term winds down. Mr. Feldman said the justices could speed the citizenship case to their docket for oral arguments at the end of April or wait until next term.

Mr. Trump also issued executive orders to end diversity, equity and inclusion practices within the federal government and to declare only two genders, male and female. Dozens of other orders address various issues. One order bans transgender people from serving in the military.

He also froze federal funding as he looks to cut spending on liberal ideologically driven programs.

Although the funding freeze could be resolved before the justices step in, the DEI and transgender policies could get scrutiny. Groups have launched legal battles and are looking to block some of them.